


Stray

by Reginald_Magpie



Series: Any Failing Empire [6]
Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy, Mindless Self Indulgence, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Demigods, Arachnophobia, Demigods, Holiday Sweaters, Marijuana, Multi, Pete Wentz doesn't even go here., Polyamory, Skateboarding, alcohol use
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-05
Updated: 2014-12-13
Packaged: 2018-02-28 07:33:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2723975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reginald_Magpie/pseuds/Reginald_Magpie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frank has lived a life defined by all his bad decisions, he's learning that now. But he's also learning that he can be a good kid; he doesn't have to get into the fist fights he got into in high school and he doesn't have to be the asshole he learned to be in middle school. He's unlearning behavior, he's doing better, he's got two amazing wonderful boyfriends.</p><p>So why does seeing that lone stray in the street make him feel so empty? Why is he looking for more?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Everybody Burn The House Right Down

The world is fucking ending. Frank is 110%, no, 120% sure of it. That’s the only explanation for that much snow in one night. He can’t see anything out the tiny dorm room window except white.

“It’s so fucking cold,” he groans into Mikey’s shoulder. He’s not letting go of Mikey, has his arms wrapped tight around his middle from the back while he attempts to sit up in Frank’s bed. Frank grips tighter.

“Frankie, jesus christ, let go,” Mikey manages to at least prop himself up on his arm, feeling around for his glasses on the bedside table.

“No, too cold.”

Mikey keeps fumbling and Frankie disentangles one arm from his captive to reach out and grab the glasses Mikey keeps missing. Mikey takes the opportunity to struggle free and onto the floor while Frank hands him the glasses.

“Ugh,” Frank mutters, curling up tighter under the blankets. Mikey stands after he’s put his glasses on and looks around for something to toss on besides the half-turned-around-his-hip blue and black boxers he’s wearing. Frank’s room is a mess and Frank doesn’t care because that’s the world outside the blankets, and that world is cold and unforgiving. Blanket world is where it’s at.

“Get up, asshole.”

Frank opens his eyes again to glare at Mikey, who’s pulled on Frank’s jacket from last night and has his hands stuffed into the pockets, taking inventory, and the jeans he’s been wearing for three days. Mikey pulls out Frank’s pack of red 100s and waves it between two fingers, quirking an eyebrow. He grabs for the pack but Mikey takes a step back.

“Can’t have a morning smoke until you get out of bed, Frankie.”

Frank tries to glare literal daggers and fails. After rolling over twice more while Mikey looks on, nonplussed, Frank finally drags himself out of bed and into not-blanket-world. 

Not-blanket-world is very, very disappointing. He’s freezing and wearing only pajama bottoms and he shivers, looking at Mikey in the most indignant, pleading way until Mikey sighs and hands over his jacket. Frank slides his fingerless gloves out of the pockets while Mikey steps out of the room and into the tiny hall dividing their two rooms from the tiny kitchenette and living room. Coffee smell fills the dorm not a minute later, by the time Frank’s put on real clothing (or at least the clothing he could find on his floor) and a hoodie under the jacket and his gloves and two pairs of socks and his big boots. He zips everything once he’s put it on. He’s taking no chances whatsoever with the weather. Colorado weather doesn’t fuck around.

Frank stands in the hall while Mikey fixes himself coffee and then moves out of the way so Frank can have at the pot. Mikey’s already buried himself in his phone, looking at his blog or tapping out text messages or doing whatever mysterious phone-related metamagic the minor god always seems to do when given two seconds of free time with his hands. 

Frank doesn’t mind, just leans in to plant a soft kiss and nibble at his jaw to distract him for long enough to let Frank step on his toe trying to get around him in the tiny kitchen. 

“Fucker,” Mikey murmurs.

“Mm-hmm,” Frank hums back, sipping his coffee, he walks over to stand by the door, his pack of cigarettes already in the same hand as the handle of his coffee mug, his fingers twitching at the pack’s paper top. 

He waits, expectantly for Mikey to follow him, but Mikey’s too engrossed in his phone, so Frank sighs and pulls his own out to check the time and the class schedule Ray did for him a few weeks back when it became evident Frank really, really sucks at time perception and realizing when he’s got class. 

“What the fuck, Mikey, it’s like seven AM, why the fuck are we awake?” he groans indignantly, flipping his digital planner pages to December first. He doesn’t even have class today and his shift at petco’s at five thirty and he’s actually pretty pissed that he’s awake this fucking early. 

“We’re going on a walk,” Mikey says, distantly still. He taps out something on his phone, taking a long swig of coffee, then reaching for the bottle of jack on top of the fridge. 

Something uncertain and a little nervous sparks in Frank.

“Too early?” Mikey asks, catching Frank’s expression before it even crosses his face. Frank can’t read whatever he’s feeling but he knows it’s not bad.

“Too early,” Frank says, with a calm, definitive nod. Mikey lets his hand fall and slides his phone back into his pocket. 

“Where are we walking to?” Frank asks, then, as he lets himself slip across the room and right up against Mikey again to pull a bit of sleep out of the corner of his eye. 

“I figured we’d smoke and then figure that out, hm?” Mikey says, with a touch of that firm-and-confident voice which always makes Frank snap to attention. (This early in the morning and in this setting, it only hardly gets his dick’s attention.)

“Then I want to go shopping,” Mikey says. 

“Why don’t we just wait until Monday when Ray goes into town? He’ll give us a ride.”

Mikey stares at him, incredulous behind the blank.

“Because it’s Monday, Frankie.”

Frank growls and makes a sound of indignance as he pushes his way through the front door, tired of waiting and Mikey follows him. There’s a note stuck to the outside of their door, which Frank grabs and investigates. He’s only just turned it around in his hands when he hears the loud clang from a few doors down. Frank shoves the paper into his pocket and looks at Mikey to find the same look of vague confusion on his face. Then after a moment of still, where they’re both deciding that yep, everything’s fine. 

“What the fuck?” from down the hall, it’s Gerard’s voice, muffled by the wall between them.

Mikey’s eyebrows raise and he and Frank turn to investigate when the sound is repeated just inside their door and they both freeze. 

“What the fuck?” Frank echoes, opening the door, and inside the lighting panels in the ceiling have started leaking water, not a slow drip but a steady stream. 

“It’s fucking raining inside what the fuck,” Frank mutters, crossing the room to examine the water. Mikey looks confused, uncertain, and a bit concerned, but says nothing. That’s when the walls start leaking. 

“What the fuck,” Frankie says again, for emphasis. He retreats to his bedroom and starts shoving his electronics and school books in a bag. Because that’s the expensive shit.

Mikey peers in, sees what he’s doing, nods, and goes to his room to do the same. 

Between them, they rescue a carton of cigarettes, Frank’s skateboard (they leave the extra deck, to Frank’s chagrin), the bottle of jack, two laptops (with chargers), three and a half phone chargers, sixteen text books, eleven keys, two student IDs, two wallets, three pairs of headphones, a binder and a folder of ‘important adult things’, two bags of weed, a pipe, a roll of papers, four lighters, a bass, a guitar, a pack of guitar picks, Frank’s spare piercing, Mikey’s spare glasses, the four of Gerard’s drawings and Gerard’s notebook which is on their table and already damp, and, for some reason and with no explanation or origin in either of their minds, a pink giraffe figurine which ends up in one of the three bags they drag it all into the hall in. 

That’s when the hall starts leaking, too, with another hollow clang. Frank groans and Mikey sighs and Frank grabs one of the backpacks and the satchel and his board and starts his way down the hall. Ray and Gerard seem to be having a harder time grabbing the important shit and going because Gerard’s arguing from the doorway whether or not they really have to save all his canvases. 

“They’re fucking expensive, asshole,” he’s shouting, in that ‘just-woke-up, havent-had-coffee’ yet voice. 

“Gee,” Mikey says, and Gerard turns around, his hair clinging to his forehead and his mouth set in a frown, “We’re going outside, need us to take anything or come back and help you?”

“Yes, fuck,” Gerard growls, and turns back to his argument with Ray, who emerges with his own guitar, which he, gratefully, hands to Mikey to hold with the other instruments. 

“Textbooks, Gerard,” Ray says.

“Ugh, maybe if I let them drown I’ll get off having to do that shit for the rest of the year,” Gerard says, but he turns and walks back into their dorm, already a few inches deep in water, to retrieve an open calc book from the table and throw it at their pile of things outside the door. While Ray helps load a few shopping bags full of food and six packs (Ray definitely has his priorities straight) onto the trucks of Frank’s board, Gerard finally gives up on saving all the canvases and shoves one each at Frank, Mikey, and Ray, then takes one himself. 

It’s a struggle making it downstairs. Other dorms are obviously having the same problem and there’s a line of wet students with bags of stuff around the corner from the elevator, so Frank elects that the stairs are best and he pushes to the front of their little quartet to shove through the stairwell door. It’s surprisingly dry and quiet in the stairwell, but Frank doesn’t trust it, so he only pauses for a second to appreciate it. 

They manage to get out onto the front lawn with the growing crowd of other drowsy college kids who look like drowned rats dripping and shivering in the foot and a half of new snow, and no one really seems to know what happened. Only maybe four of the eighty or so clustered loosely around the dorm on their cell phones look like they were previously awake and most look genuinely surprised at the white stuff on the ground. 

It’s seven fucking thirty and Frank’s about to make a point that no one else was awake either but he realizes that Mikey’s dissolved into the crowd and Gerard’s left him by five feet to talk to Lindsey, who’s dripping wet and looks exhausted. So Frankie goes back to people watching after pulling out a cigarette and airing out the damp paper for the whole point two seconds he can manage before he fits it between his lips.

It’s really kind of hilarious the amount of college kids who said ‘fuck it’ and just left all their stuff in their rooms, opting for a cup of coffee or a pack of cigarettes. Also the amount of them who forgot to get dressed, among the number of which Gerard is; he’s wearing boxers and an ugly sweater and a pair of converse without socks and he’s standing calf-deep in fresh snow, Frank watches goosebumps rise on his skin.

Frank’s begrudgingly decided that maybe Mikey getting him up this early was a good thing. He tromps through the snow, looking for Mikey and finally locating him talking to 

Alicia, trying to talk her into giving him her coffee. Alicia’s among the number who left her things (save a phone and phone charger) behind, and Alicia’s among the number of Mikey’s exes who Frank absolutely despises. 

He turns on his heel when he sees her, but Mikey’s already caught sight of him and excuses himself after stealing her cup momentarily to down half of it.

Frank doesn’t watch Mikey follow him toward where Ray is attempting to find a dry spot to put the canvases and instruments. 

“Hey, you didn’t save Steve, did you?” Frank calls out as he approaches. Ray looks up and rolls his eyes, although Frank can tell some part of him is trying not to laugh.

“Do you really think I wanted to carry a gigantic coffee machine down two flights of stairs when I had more important things, Frank?” 

Frank chuckles and shrugs. 

“Mikey’s trying to literally steal coffee from people,” he informs.

“Am not!” Mikey interjects, shoving in to help Ray prop the canvases against the lower branches of a tree.

“He was,” Frank insists. He toes a corner of the canvas out of the snow so it won’t get wet and takes a drag off his cigarette. It feels like it’s getting colder, but Frank figures that’s likely the dampness on his shoulders freezing to his skin. Which isn’t really all that comforting. He frowns.

“Hey, does anyone know what the fuck is going on?” James asks, sidling up behind Frank, stealing his cigarette.

Frank scowls and rummages for his pack to light another as he shoves his shoulder into Dewees. 

“It started raining inside,” Mikey says, and James half-glares, half-stares at him.

“No fucking duh, Mikes, I meant does anyone know why it decided to do that?” Dewees takes a drag off of what used to be Frank’s cigarette and helps Ray push the guitars into the lowest branches of the tree to get them off the ground. Frank doesn’t bother pointing out it’s probably just as wet up there.

“It sounded like pipes rupturing,” Ray says. Frank nods. That makes sense, at least. 

“Do you think they’ll open the steam tunnels this year?” Gerard asks, dragging Lindsey over by the cuff of her sleeve and leaning his head into her shoulder. Mikey moves next to Frank, lacing their fingers.

“Probably not. They don’t want people actually knowing about them I don’t think,” Ray says, he sighs, leaning back against the tree while James pokes at Frank’s shoulder. Frank shoves him and turns his attention back to Gerard.

“Yeah, so only the professor can be warm walking to fucking class,” Gerard mutters. He shakes his head and Frank leans over to take his hand with the hand not currently in Mikey’s. Gerard gives him that tired smile that says he didn’t sleep well and he’s not in a good mood.

“Hey,” Frank interjects, he looks at Ray, “Do you think your car will start in the cold?”

Ray shrugs like he hadn’t thought of it. 

“Worth a shot,” he says, and thinks for a moment, staring at the canvases and instruments, “and we can probably fit this shit in there, too, so it’d be good to get it over there anyway. God knows the dorms aren’t going to dry out in this cold.”

“Dorm popsicles,” Frank agrees, hefting his board (with food and beer still attached) and bags again, going for one of the canvases before James grabs it first.

“If you let me come along to be outta the snow I’ll help you lug stuff over there. I left all my shit, doesn’t matter. Maybe if the textbooks are fucked up enough we won’t have to do textbook work for the rest of the year.”

Gerard shoots Ray a look that says ‘exactly, fucking hell why didn’t you let me leave my books?’ Frank watches Ray pointedly ignore him and take a headcount. 

“Is Lindsey coming?” Ray asks Gerard instead of Lindsey, and Lindsey rolls her eyes.

“Lindsey is coming,” she says, snide.

“Then Mikey’s gonna have to sit on Gerard’s lap,” Ray says, quirking an eyebrow.

“Um, fuck that shit, who said I want him on my lap?” Gerard asks.

Mikey snickers, “Your dick.”

“I can sit on someone’s lap. I’m smaller,” Frank points out.

“Mine!” James insists, grinning at Mikey’s questioning look, “Frankie’s ticklish, I totally wanna capitalize.”

“You mean capitalize on the fact I’ll fucking take out your eyeballs if you try anything?” Frank punches him in the shoulder.

“We can figure it out when we get there, I guess,” Ray says, shoving the canvases into James’ arms.

* * *

Ray has an old, well cared for volvo v90 which has been serving him faithfully since he was still in high school with Gerard, and which belonged to his mother’s boyfriend before Ray restored it from its almost-not-running glory. It smells like buttered popcorn, always. Something which consistently confuses every single passenger.

The sun is hugging the clouds on the horizon like a blanket of ash after vesuvius. The sky can’t decide if it wants to be blue and the trees which forgot to lose their leaves are giving in. The evergreens on campus remain unchanging.

It takes ten minutes to haul their things back to the student parking lot, and the lot’s already half empty for the holidays that most of the kids well enough put together to have their own vehicles go home for, which is lucky. Because no one gets to see their frustrated attempts at simultaneously keeping their belongings out of the snow while also warming and digging out the car.

Eventually, Ray gets fed up, raises his hands and summons a wide, hot burst of sunlight across the hood of the car which melts the snow and ice enough that the scraper can get the residues off enough to actually open the doors. The trunk is a little trickier, and takes two more acute bursts of sunlight and heat from their very own Apollo divinitykid to open and unlock through the ice, cold, and general complaining of an old car stuck in snow.

Frank lights another cigarette while Dewees steals his guitar and sits on the back hitch, doing a few exercises and the others argue over the idea of going back into the dorms and seeing what’s worth saving. Frank trots around the car and up to Ray, stealing his car keys out of his front pocket and opening the driver’s door of the volvo to start the car and let some heat actually find his bones. He stopped feeling his fingers three minutes back and doesn’t particularly enjoy the idea of being in the cold any longer. Ray doesn’t seem to mind, just glances at him, then continues arguing with the Ways, saying that the stuff they’re leaving is important even if they don’t want it to be.

Lindsey and Dewees join Frank in the car. It’s another twenty minutes before they get anywhere, Ray actually loses the argument for once, but only because everyone wants coffee and it’s too early for this bullshit.

Frank thanks fuck for the warm car, and for Gerard’s shoulder warm against his back. He tries not to think about how much he likes Gerard. He tries not to think about Mikey’s hands sneaking along Gerard’s thigh months back. 

He just wants to be out of the cold. Something about the first biting, bone-wrenching cold always gets Frank caught in the doldrums. 

When he was still in high school, his mom called it sad, or SAD. Seasonal affective. Winter depression. Frank always figured it was just the cold weather and the snow. It doesn’t feel like the depression he’s had before, it feels like the world is trying to choke him. He figures that’s just human instinct. 

The frozen water across his shoulders melts in the heat of the car and he can feel Gerard’s fingers through his jacket, rubbing the wet spots into his skin where they’re bound to freeze again the second they leave the car.

Frank shivers and plucks at his gloves while he leans into Gerard and Gerard leans forward to rest his chin on Frank’s shoulder. There’s something warm about it in his gut and where the breath settles hot on his neck. Frank looks at Mikey, searching for direction. 

Mikey smiles, soft, small at him. That everything-is-okay smile. That smile that only Mikey can smile and the smile that makes Frank shiver and feel solid again. 

Colorado Springs saunters by the window like a fake winter wonderland and leaves tracks of dirty slush on the volvo’s clean windshield. They end up parking in the dismally cold parkinglot outside Cthonic Coffee and Gerard groans underneath him.

“We don’t have to go to my work for coffee, you know,” he growls to Dewees, who’s snickering in the front seat as he undoes his seatbelt. The volvo starts dinging at him about not wearing it. Dewees flips off the dashboard and Ray scowls at him. 

“We make better coffee than Le Petit Chat,” Lindsey points out, opening her car door, “And it’s cheaper. Plus, Brad’s probably working. And he’s always good at refills no-questions-asked.”

“Mmn,” Gerard hums in defeat into Frank’s neck. Frank can feel the vibration of his lips. It sends a deep quivering through his gut as he opens the door and scrambles off of Gerard and to the trunk, where he retrieves his skateboard with trembling fingers

The sound of the wheels hitting concrete and jostling the trucks as he takes the few moments to the door are exactly what Frank needs.

Cthonic Coffee is warm on the inside. The first time Frank was ever here, he was scoping Gerard out, examining the difference between his real face and his face in pictures. He’d been different, more like how Frank sees Mikey. Less like how Frank imagines some overarching concept of death. 

He’s pushing himself to not get stuck in his head like he usually does in the cold. He’s trying to convince himself that today won’t go badly. Something in his head says it will.

“Gerard, why aren’t you wearing pants?” Brad asks, upon their party’s bumbling entry. He looks genuinely concerned and Gerard just smirks, pushing past him to walk around the counter and start making coffee. 

“The dorms flooded,” Lindsey offers as she comes through the door behind him.

“Okay but why isn’t Gerard wearing pants?” Brad asks, again, still obviously confused. Frank crosses to sit on the counter, laying his board out over his lap. 

“The dorms flooded,” Gerard reiterates, sliding the first cup of coffee to Frankie and giving him a look which says ‘I see you there, feeling a little something, I’m here’. Gerard is really good at that. Frank tries not to think too hard about how much he likes that. Brad seems to drop it, and Frank decides he’s pretty chill. 

The next cup of coffee goes to Mikey, who’s sat down at the corner of the long counter, and looks at home from the second he walks into the room. His hands are full of phone and he doesn’t look up when the mug slides to a stop against his outstretched fingers. 

Gerard lets Lindsey let Brad make her a cup properly after he’s procured one for himself and he gives Dewees the ‘you’re on your own, buddy’ look. Frankie can’t help but chuckle at the look of mock-betrayal on Dewees’ face.

Some part of Frank realizes it, then, how much of an outsider he feels. Mikey’s his boyfriend, yes, and these are Mikey’s friends. This is Mikey’s family. Frank just feels like the dog. The way he forces himself to keep laughing so no one catches on is thinking about the irony of being a literal dogseal’s child and feeling like a dog. Gerard looks at him for a second too long and Frank drops his eyes to the bottom of his deck splayed across his lap so he doesn’t have to meet his eyes. 

Frank’s mom bought him this deck when he left for living in the dorms. It’s decorated in red, a splatterpainted wolf howling at the nose of the board. Frank traces the design with his fingertips and only looks up once he’s watched Gerard turn away in his periphery. 

A tiny bit of Frank misses his mom. So he leaves the cafe early to sit in Ray’s car and call her.

“Hey mom,” he says, when he hears static on the other line, he leans back into the passenger seat of the car, letting the smell of buttered popcorn fill him and encompass his senses.

“Hey honey,” she says, in that way that says she’s smiling, “Is something wrong?”

“The dorms flooded,” Frank says, scrubbing his eyes with his free hand. 

“Oh honey… Do you need somewhere to stay? I can see if I have any friends…”

Frank stops her, “Wait, is there a reason I can’t stay with you?”

She laughs over the line, an awkward, embarrassed laugh. One Frank’s heard before. It’s a guilty laugh. It’s an offering for him to turn around now and never know. Frank briefly thinks about how he should definitely be saying ‘it’s okay, you don’t have to tell me’ right now.

“Mom, tell me,” is what Frank says instead. Frank’s mother makes a sound caught between another guilty laugh and a sigh. The line’s static has a field day with it.

“I’m spending the week in Utah, with a guy I’ve been seeing.”

Frank nods. He tries to feel something about that, like he would have if he were only four years younger than he is now. But he can’t. He feels numb and a twinge of distaste. 

“Can I use the house?” he asks, finally, because he doesn’t want to comment on this being his mother’s first time being open about seeking male company for almost as long as Frank can remember. 

“Oh honey…” she says, in that voice that she’s used since Frank was little, that voice that makes Frank feel stupid for even asking. 

“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” she’s reassuring in that way that means she thinks the opposite of what she’s saying but she’s being nice, “But I can’t have a bunch of college kids alone in my house. You know how much work I’ve been doing on the carpetting…”

“Yeah, of course, sorry,” Frank murmurs into the phone, he shakes his head, “Thanks for talking to me. I’ll find some friends to stay with or something.” 

“I love you,” is all Frank’s mother can manage to get in before he hangs up. A little pain pooling in Frankie’s stomach turns sour and he has to open the passenger side door to spit. That’s when he sees it, out of the corner of his eye, a huge, shaggy dog with light fur, overturning a trash can in the alley across the street. 

It looks like a golden retriever, with ears half-flopped and too-big for its head, but it has a dark muzzle, which Frank figures might be a result of habitual garbage-rooting-through. 

He stands up and closes the volvo’s door, shoving the keys into his pocket while he skirts the parking lot until he’s reached the edge of the road.

From the alley, the dog picks its head up, one long limb lifting, the front paw poised close to the chest, waiting for Frank to get close enough to warrant running. From here, Frankie can make out the all-too-beaten collar, rugged and worn to white around the bits where it bends most. He can almost hear the jangling of tags.

He’s dealt with stray dogs before; whenever he sees one he stops and checks the tags and does his best not to want to steal the dog for whatever reason while the owner(s) show up. 

The cars are relentless, and there’s no stoplight up the block, so it takes a good seven minutes of standing there, while the dog carefully, keeping one ear swivelled toward Frank, goes back to rooting around in the garbage, withdrawing scraps and lowering almost to the ground to chew on them before levering itself back up with hind legs to keep searching. 

Then the cars stop, and the dog’s head picks up to watch Frankie pick his way across the street. Frank doesn’t use his board, though compulsive thoughts make his fingers twitch for it out of habit and comfort on wheels, he doesn’t want to scare the poor thing.

Scaring the dog seems out of the question, though, as Frank approaches and it starts, freezing, and backing up a few paces before turning tail and sprinting toward the dumpster further back in the alley. Frank watches as it jumps up against the metal, barely managing to scramble across the lip of the dumpster into it.

Frank follows, without thinking, and takes a running jump at the dumpster similar to the dog’s, swinging his legs over the side with momentum and sheer force of willpower. He hears the dog as clanging in the dumpster below him, but it’s too dark to see and he can only hardly feel the dog’s fur against his leg where it’s scrambling to find a way out that isn’t exactly where Frankie is standing. Some part of Frank feels a little bad for trapping the dog like this, but as he reaches down, runs his fingers against fur, he’s not focusing on that, but rather the necessity of finding where this dog is from. 

His fingers catch on the collar and the dog’s head swings around to close heavy jaws on Frankie’s other arm. It’s a dull pain, then a sharper one, and Frank’s hands spring away from the dog as it scrambles back up, and out of the dumpster, and down the alley. By the time Frank’s gotten himself out of the dumpster, only its muddy footprints in the fresh snow remain. 

Frank shrugs dejected shoulders against the wind and starts trudging back to the car. He left his phone in the passenger seat and took the keys so he hopes the guys aren’t too pissed at him for taking off like that. But they’d understand, right?

Ray’s leaning against the driver’s side door with a cigarette between his lips when Frank returns. Frank tosses him the keys, and Ray catches them but makes no move to open the car, so Frank shimmies his pack out of his pocket and pulls one out for himself. 

“Where were you? You smell like you rolled in something,” Ray says with a chuckle.

“In a dumpster, chasing a dog,” Frankie says, through his cigarette while he points down the opposing alley. 

“Of course you were,” Ray smirks that not-unfriendly smirk of his and takes the last few drags of his cigarette in silence. While not an awkward silence, it is a hungry, pregnant one which devours the thought of any conversation Frank has. He’s content to smoke until they’ve all piled into the car again and he’s climbing into Gerard’s lap. This time they’re going to drop Gerard and Mikey off at their mother’s. 

Then it’s Dewees and Lindsey, dropped off at Jimmy’s, and Frank and Ray are alone together in the car.

“Where are you going, Frankie?” Ray asks, as he’s nosing the car back toward the dorms through two-foot-high snowdrifts. 

Frank shrugs. 

“My mom’s hanging out with some guy out of town and I can’t use the house. So I thought I’d go back to the dorms and see if anything’s still dry, then find someone whose couch I can crash on.”

Ray nods, looking thoughtful, then shaking his head. 

“I dunno, I’d check with Cobra House, but I hear they’re pretty much packed for the holidays. I figure I’m gonna go see if Andy has any room at the co-op. I hear he’ll be staying there. Why don’t you text some people and if that doesn’t pan out you and me can go down to the co-op and if that doesn’t work we can see if my brother’s got any space, yeah?” 

Frank looks up at Ray with a blinding smile, because it’s been all day since someone put that much thought to his well being and it feels nice. It feels nice to have attention on him and Frank doesn’t care how much of a slut he is for thinking about it that way.

“Thanks, man,” he says, through a smile.

By the time the sun decides to peek through the clouds, Ray and Frank are pulled up outside the dorms sending out messages between sips of the six packs Frank rescued from Ray and Gerard’s dorm.


	2. Tell Me I'm An Angel; Take This To My Grave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the battle skateboard is introduced, briefly, in passing, when it's not actually there. (It won't come into play until so much later.)

Of all the people Frank texted, the one person who responds is the one he expected least; Pete. His text almost gets lost between the texts from Mikey and Gerard, who are explaining that their hyper-christian mother would be okay with him spending the holidays in the guest room, as long as he pretends to still just be Mikey’s friend. 

And then there’s Pete’s text. 

‘hey u can stay at my place if u need & dont mind my crew or me gettin a dog while ur here’

And something about that just sits better in Frank’s guts (it might be the dog thing) than the thought of spending Christmas in exactly the Christian household he’s been avoiding his entire high school career.

That’s how Frank ends up on Pete’s front doorstep, looking at his white door and wondering what Gerard would think, but beyond that just wondering how long the water damage repairs in the dorms will take. The snow has yet to drift into the alcove where the door to Pete’s apartment is nestled, but the wind is freezing, and Frank nudges his grip on his skateboard over so he can shield the hole in his jeans with it, stop the cold wind from travelling up his leg. 

As he’s about to work up the nerve to knock, the door flies open, and something darts past Frank’s left ear. He’s got quick enough reflexes to follow it with his eyes and his skateboard clatters as his hand jumps to grab at it, reflexive, but it returns with only the fleeting feeling of scaled hide against skin and air. There’s a flash as the wind it kicked up whips over Frank’s skin and against the already raising wind, and then whatever large grey mass just flew past him is gone. 

Frank peers quizzically into the apartment, noting the dust still settling from whatever that was. He’s met by Pete, who peers around the doorway in a near-mirror of Frank’s bemused expression. 

“Hey,” Pete says, then, still looking past Frank, confused.

“What was that?” Frank asks.

“Uh, messenger of Athena, unless it was pretending to be something it wasn’t,” Pete says with a shrug. He looks like he’s trying to pass it off as nothing even though it’s not. Frank figures it’s best to let him pretend. 

“So uh. Figured I’d drop in,” Frank says, instead of pursuing the topic and probably with a little too much overthought beforehand. 

“Oh, yeah, of course man, come in.” Pete grins, gesturing into the apartment. 

Perhaps the first thing that Frank notices is that the floor is a good half a dozen inches lower on one side of the room than the other; the entire main room of the apartment tilts on an angle. (Frank’s first thought on the floor is ‘that is not a floor for being drunk on’.)

Then, his eyes skate the layer of dust that ineffably covers most surfaces, and the chubby demigod on the couch in a pulled-down trucker cap and argyle. Pete beckons him in and 

Frank leans his board against the arm of the couch on which Patrick is sitting. 

“Hey Frankie.” Patrick looks like Mikey looks someetimes, when his facade of nonchalance is close to wreckage. When he’s fighting not to look scared or upset so hard he’s lost to the world. Frankie hates this look. So Pete, who wears his wars on his sleeves, so much more certain in his failure than Patrick or Mikey. Frank sets his bags down by his board and glances at Pete. 

Pete looks tired, though, more tired than the fear Patrick’s fighting, that falls below even a sense of uncertain concern. Frank feels his hackles raise. Something’s going on here, and even with Frank’s experience, he’s able to ascertain maybe it’s not the best time for him to be around the apartment. 

So he turns to Pete.

“Hey, sorry to drop my stuff and run but, you know, work. I’ll be back tonight, thank you so much for letting me crash, I’ll come back with weed and pack you a bowl or someshit, promise.” Frank gives Pete his best dog grin and wags a mental tail and digs around in his bags for his work clothes, stuffs those into the smaller bag along with cigarettes and keys and lighters, and slings it over his shoulder, toeing his skateboard into his hand again. 

Frank’s out the door in about six seconds.

* * *

Frankie didn’t really skateboard until the summer before middle school; this meant he was far behind the learning curve of the other boys who took skating way-too-seriously, and had been skating since they could walk or so. 

He spent a lot of time catching up, and learning to be all elbows and fists to compare to the public school boys. What got him dropped from the public school circuit was fighting over a piece of choice ‘turf’, the skatepark a bit east of the catholic school. No school would have him with a record like his, except the catholic school, for this reason or that.

By the time Frankie was sixteen, he was the referee of the halfpipe, policeman of the bowl, mostly because no sober person who’d seen him with his fists going would usually stand up to him, and because Frank more or less just wanted everyone to get along and use the skatepark for what it was meant. A great deal of the respect which wasn’t earned with fists was earned with how good Frank looked on the halfpipe.

Frank hasn’t ever forgotten the first time he started feeling like he could move on a skateboard as easily as he could run down the street. He was almost thirteen and downtown; trying to get to Acacia Park. He’d just passed the old lemon-lime green and charcoal gray mustang which always seems to be parked in downtown Colorado Springs somewhere, and he came upon an unexpected decline, steeper than he thought it would be by a wide margin. But he went with it, he picked his foot up off the pavement and he let it happen. 

Frank hasn’t felt quite as natural on foot as he has on his board since. It’s gone everywhere with him. Walking is now too quiet and unnaturally rhythmic. 

Frank loves skateboarding. The whirr of wheels, the grind of trucks, the scratches on the bottom of his deck and the wind against his neck, the way the ground bends when he turns and the way it comes with a thousand tiny badges of honor in scars and being able to carry a board and feel like it’s weightless. The one thing he doesn’t love about skateboarding is how dogs react to him skateboarding.

When Frankie hears the sound of claws on asphalt behind him, his brain automatically clicks into situational. It’s only when Frank turns his head that the dog starts barking. And that’s when Frank falls flat on his face. His board goes rolling into the parking lane and under the tires of a stationary Ford sedan. 

He saw it though, that dog is the same exact dog, and there it is, hackles raised, two paces away from him. So Frank has to choose between going after the stray (which he would believe was a hallucination if he didn’t still have the bite bruises) and saving his skateboard from the wet gutter and underbelly of a car.

As amazing as dogs are, the stray must have taken care of itself enough to get all the way out this side of town, so Frank went for the board, shoving his body underneath the car and letting his shirt press into the dirty slush at the perimeter of the car, his arm outstretched to feel for the board. He hears claws behind him, receding, and footsteps but is too focused on attempting to fish his board out from under the car to anticipate the sudden sharp pressure against his ass, forcing his face down into the slush. 

“I’d know this ass anywhere,” a voice chuckles behind him, the pressure letting up while Frank swears against the dirty water running down his lip. Frank hears the foot touch asphalt and continues rooting for his board under the car, finally his fingers hit wood and grip tape. He wraps his middle finger into the curve of the nose of the board and rolls it back out from under the car, extricating it with great care. The sticker on the tail has started to peel. 

It’s only once he has his board fully removed that he turns and looks at the guy standing above him, and Frank’s face immediately falls into a comfortable grin. He was expecting a familiar asshole, some tormenter. A terror of some sort. Instead, Shaun looks down at him with a soft smile.

“Been a while,” he says.

Frank peers around him to see where the dog’s gone, he can’t see it. Then he exchanges greetings.

Shaun insists on spending a good half hour talking on the street there about comics and video games and the things he’s doing these days (Frank hasn’t seen him since highschool and frankly isn’t in the mood to be reminded of who he was in highschool right now), he manages to escape Shaun by the time he has to head to work, but by that time the dog is long gone and Frank has no idea where to look.

As he enters PetCo for his shift, he decides he absolutely must find this dog, no matter what. There’s something special about it.

* * *

When Frank gets off work, he has about a thousand text messages. “I love you”s from the Ways, along with their well wishes, but that they’re not going out tonight because they want to watch zombie flics, for which Frank is a little angry since he can’t join them unless he confronts their incredibly Catholic mother. 

The text messages Frank doesn’t anticipate are an apology from an unknown number (although one from the Springs’ area code), and a frantic text from Gabe which reads only ‘please come over, I left you a message.’

Frank walks to the break table out front of the PetCo and lights a cigarette while he puts the phone to his ear to listen to the message. 

“Hey,” Gabe slurs on the other line, “Mikey and Gerard won’t pick up, Ryland’s outta town, Vicky and Nate are under curfew, everyone seems to be busy, so, just, come over when you’re out of work, please, I need someone to talk to. I…” the rest is nonsensical, alcohol-addled, but Frank hasn’t ever known Gabe to ask for help like this, Gabe doesn’t call and beg someone to come over because he’s upset, it’s unheard of, it’s not nearly cool enough to be a “Gabe thing.”

Frank catches a bus toward Cobra House before he can even finish his cigarette.

* * *

Frank has never seen Cobra House when it’s not in its post-party or mid-party glory. Without drunk twenty-somethings hanging over the stoop and Ryland watching the door, it looks like an empty shell of something that it should be.

Frankie feels anxiety bubble in his gut as he approaches, like this is some terrible horror movie, like he’s going to be murdered. 

He holds his board loose in his left hand while he knocks, poised to swing. Gabe’s at the door in a second. He doesn’t look like he’s slept, the bags under his eyes are out of place. He sways a little against the door. 

“Hey, Gabe…” Frank frowns, eyebrows knitting with concern. 

“Frankie,” Gabe slurs, and wobbles back from the door so Frank can walk in. He’s still in his work uniform, so he starts pulling his shirt off at the door. That’s how Cobra House is. Gabe’s eyes flick down Frank’s torso once, then dully flick away. 

“What’s wrong?” Frank asks.

“Bilvy’s gone,” is all Gabe says, and he looks down (such a long way down, too) at Frank with big empty eyes, Frank figures out finally the red isn’t from weed but from tears. Gabe’s never looked so small.

“You broke up?” Frank just needs to clarify.

“No.” Gabe catches him off guard with that, “We can’t find him. No one’s seen him for two days. He hasn’t answered texts, emails, calls..”

Frank blinks while his blood runs a little cold with worry, “Holy shit, dude, have you called the police?”

“Isn’t there a waiting period?” Gabe asks hazily, like he can’t really focus. 

Frank dials the police department once he’s sat Gabe down at a dining room table and given him a joint to pacify him. Gabe just plays with it, he doesn’t light it.

Frankie leans his head into his palm against the table while he listens to the phone ring. The answer is almost immediate and Frank gets to the point where they ask where he was last seen before asking Gabe for details. 

“Ryland, a friend, walked him to class two days ago in the morning and no one’s heard from him or seen him since,” Frankie relays to the woman who answered. He raises an eyebrow at Gabe, but Gabe’s either too drunk to get the prompt or just doesn’t care. 

“Yes ma’am,” Frank says, and nods in time, “He’s eighteen now. Tall, uh,” he looks at Gabe, gesturing for details, and Gabe raises fingers so Frank can keep talking, “6’2” and skinny, brown hair, brown eyes, caucasian, last seen wearing, uh, a v-neck and skinny jeans.”

“Yes ma’am, thank you. No, this isn’t the number you should contact. I’m calling for his uh, his friend,” Frank catches himself before saying ‘boyfriend’, not knowing how she’d react, his eyes meet Gabes and they both nod tiny little nods of understanding. 

“No, ma’am, not the friend who dropped him off. His best friend who he lives with sometimes.”

“He usually lives in the residence halls of Garden of the Gods Institute,” Frank answers the woman on the other end of the line, “But they flooded today, so he can’t go back there if he shows up.”

He gives Cobra House’s address, and explains that the property belongs to Brendon, and relays contact information. He’s assured there will be a search party as soon as they have the resources and Frank tries to be satisfied with that. 

As soon as Frank ends the call, both of them let out a tiny breath in response to the feeling of tightness associated with difficult phone calls being released.

“I can’t believe you didn’t do that,” Frank murmurs, he’s trying to be humorous but he knows his voice comes out more somber than that. 

“Shut up.” Gabe’s trying to reciprocate the failed humor, but neither of them really can. Gabe rolls the joint that Frank gave him between his fingers, and finally, lights it after rummaging in his pockets for a lighter. Frank pulls his cigarettes out of his coat pocket and looks around for an ashtray.

Gabe’s lungs are full of smoke, so he just shakes his head and stands up, gesturing with his chin out of the room while he passes the joint back to Frank, who takes it and holds it a finger away from his pack of cigarettes while he gets up, too.

“No smoking in here,” Gabe says, smoke fleeing his mouth with the breath, and Gabe half-inhales again to keep holding. Frank takes a long hit and passes the joint back so Gabe has an excuse to breathe while he leads them out of the room and into a smaller lounge which Frank vaguely recognizes from the parties he’s attended here. There’s a potted plant in the corner which he’s pretty sure Gerard puked in at one point.

Gabe sits in an overstuffed purple chair at the head of the coffee table in the corner next to the flatscreen on the wall, and opens the minifridge within a (long) arm’s reach of it. (Frank figures this is a child-of-Dionysus-must-have-booze-closeby thing.) He passes Frank a Coors before Frank can protest (not that he would), and removes one for himself. 

For a long moment, they sit in silence after their beer cans have popped open with diminutive little hisses and the only sound is marijuana and paper burning slow down to the roach and the wet sound of drinking out of a can. Frank thinks distantly about his high school days trying to invent a non-gross-sounding way to drink something out of a can, and about how he didn’t really mean to come over here to get high but he wants to make Gabe feel better. 

He doesn’t know how, though. Frank’s realising more and more as he entrenches himself in the culture of Garden of the Gods Institute that he doesn’t know people as well as he thinks he does. As far as he knows, drinking, weed, and William are the things that cheer Gabe up, and it looks like Gabe has all but one base covered in those areas. 

And beyond Gabe, Frank hardly knows William, for that matter, although he has a sneaking suspicion not many people do. 

He swings from social to antisocial, quiet to outgoing and talkative, he’s unpredictable but not dangerous, still, an anomaly to Frank, who’s only met him maybe four or five times now, properly. 

He lights a cigarette once they’ve finished the joint, and offers one to Gabe but Gabe declines in favor of searching the couch for a remote. 

“Do you think he’s okay?” Frank can’t stop himself from asking, and once it’s out, he gives in and lets the rest go, “I mean, in your gut. Do you feel like he’s still around?”  
Gabe stares at Frank, nothing really happening behind those eyes. He plucks at his hoodie string. A purple fluff detaches from the string and catches on Gabe’s nail. 

“I don’t feel good,” is all Gabe says, and Frank stops himself from saying everything else he’s thinking. (Will’s so feminine, long-legged and the perfect candidate for predators of a certain type, how dazed Will is sometimes, how easy he’d be to hurt.)

They watch Attenborough documentaries on television until Animal Planet runs out of them and they’re not so stoned and way more drunk than Frank intended to get.

It’s Ray he ends up calling while he’s sitting on the front porch smoking a cigarette with Gabe to get out of the smoky house and the stagnant feeling of emptiness in it, and because it’s darker than dark and colder than cold and Frank wants to go home. Wherever “home” is now.

The people staying at Cobra House over the holidays started flooding back in forty five minutes ago, released from whatever daily duties or entertainment they’d found that day. 

Everything in Frank feels like it’s echoing, he doesn’t know if it’s the alcohol or the empty feeling in his stomach. 

“Ray?” he asks as soon as he hears background static on the other end of the line.

“Hey, Frankie, what’s up? Is everything okay? Pete let you in?” There’s the sound of machinery in the background, almost loud enough to drown Ray’s voice. 

“Yeah, yeah, drunk, at Cobra House. Wondering if I could get a ride but… where are you?” Frank manages, he knows he’s slurring but he can’t gather enough mental fortitude to stop. 

“At my brother’s shop, uh, it’ll take me a minute, but I can come grab you.”

“Are you busy?” Frank asks, fighting to hold onto the narrative now, to remember decency and why he’s calling in the first place. The railing spins up to meet his arm as he leans against it and the warm heat in his brain shifts a little, making his insides tingle and buzz.

“No, just watching Gracie. Can you reel the profanity in if I bring her?” 

“Fuck yeah, man,” Frank slurs. He giggles. He’s not sure why. His cheeks are getting hot, and Gabe gives him that smile from the other side of the railing that says he’s proud of himself for inebriating another young soul. 

Everything after that slides into spin and blur, vague darkness and the sound of rain beginning to fall on the sparkling snow and the ice slicking the streets.

The next thing Frank is fully conscious of is sitting in the front seat of Ray’s volvo and breathing in the smell of freshly buttered popcorn with a hunger he needs sated, and craning over the seat to look at the beautiful young girl in the seat behind him. 

She looks like Ray, at least, as far as a very drunk Frank can tell, and with her face tilted to the window (earbuds in, Frank notices), her skin catches moonlight like that’s what it was created to do. She looks supernatural, like she’s got a halo white glow around her, and her hair is catching rainbows like clouds around the moon on a very, very cold night. 

Then the next thing Frank will remember is shouting and pointing out the windshield. 

“Stop!” Something automatic in his brain made him say it, Frank’s hardly paying attention to the things in his head anymore.

The dog, the same one, is standing there, in the middle of the street, now, eyes directly on the car. Something about the dog scares Frank, now, the way its eyes are fixed on him. 

As Ray slams on the brake pedal, and Frank goes flying into the dash (should have put on a seatbelt), Frank realises that the reason his spine is crawling at the dog’s eyes is that something about them is human. Beyond the human, sentient element Frank sees in most animals, the dog’s eyes look human. Physically human. Or maybe he’s too drunk to be making aesthetic judgments. 

He wrestles with the door for a moment before toppling out of it into the rain. The dog doesn’t move, just remains frozen with its eyes on Frank. 

And, because he’s drunk and Frank doesn’t know what else to do, he decides that he needs to treat this dog like he’s a dog too. 

(Frank is half telechine; telechine are dogseal forgemen. And Frank draws his metalworking and jewelers’ skill from his dogseal father, but the similarities don’t stop there. Frank, perhaps doggish in his personality besides, shaves his high-cheek whiskers when he shaves his beard, he usually resists the urge to get down on his hands and knees with dogs and play, or flee for the nearest body of water if he’s exposed to it. His wild urges are usually kept down. This is not ‘usually’, evidently. Alcohol helps bring out the animal in him.)

Frank drops to his knees, and places his palms flat on the ground, pressing his chest down while his face and gaze stay fixed on the dog. He bounces on his fingers a little, making a huffing sound and the dog immediately relaxes a little, poises to come closer. Frank rolls down on one shoulder, then, flipping onto his back, and the dog trots over, sniffing at Frank’s chin. Frank’s hand darts up and closes around the dog’s worn leather collar. It has holes like studs have been removed from it and the tags jangle against 

Frank’s hand as he pushes himself up with his free hand and pulls the dog toward the car.

It goes willingly, surprisingly enough, and Gracie opens the opposing back door for Frank. The dog seems more uncertain about the car than being led by a collar, but Gracie runs a hand through the wet fur on the dog’s nose and something about her touch calms it. 

As Frank opens the door to the passenger seat, Ray gives him a disapproving look.

“I just cleaned the car, Frank,” he says.

“And I’m fucking freezing,” Frank counters, sitting down and pulling the door closed behind him. He reaches his arm back over the center console to pet the dog, and to find the worn leather collar. 

“Buckle up, would you, Frankie? There’s a kid in the car.” Frank rolls his eyes but goes for the buckle. 

“I don’t think him buckling up is going to save me,” Grace points out, and Frankie reaches his arm back again to offer her some knuckles. She bumps his fist and they share a little smirk.

Ray snorts and keeps driving. 

By the time they reach Pete’s apartment, the rain has given into a small drizzle, and the enclave in which the apartment is set is more or less sheltered from it. Frank slides a hand through the dog’s collar, thinking he’ll bring her up to Pete’s apartment before he figures out whose she is. 

When he gets to the door, Pete answers with a grin, then drops down on his knee to run fingers through the dog’s wet fur like she’s the one he’s supposed to be greeting, not Frank. (Frank doesn’t blame him at all.)

“Who’s this beauty?”

“I dunno,” Frank shrugs, “I’m drunk and wobbly lemme in.”

So Pete does, taking the dog’s collar from him until the door closes behind them both and Frank can slump against the couch and attempt to make out the dog’s tags. He’s vaguely aware of Patrick sitting properly on the couch but it doesn’t matter as the world pitches back when he leans. 

He registers himself skimming the tags in a distant, uncertain way but finds no real information on them. It takes him a long moment to figure it out.

“They’re just vaccination tags,” he says out loud.

Frank won’t remember the rest of the night.

* * *

He wakes up at noon the next day to an empty apartment. The dog isn’t there, and neither are Pete or any of his friends. There’s something eerily quiet about the way the gray light slides over the windowsill and confines itself to only a corner of dusty hardwood. In his achey, half-awake, half-hungover brain, it looks like a creature hunched and resting there, shown only in shifting dustmotes. 

It takes him a very, very long moment to realize that it _is_ something. 

It takes him even longer to react properly. 

He can’t discern what exactly it is, slouched in on itself it looks like something out of a horror movie, grey, feathered, folded like a pterodactyl. Its back looks human, the spine stands out. It wobbles as it turns, like it’s injured. 

She’s not; she has a woman’s form, and he can see now what looks like golden transparent fishing line strung between her winged-arms’ wrists, where the tip of the wing and the hand split off from one another, and her thighs. She’s wearing a skirt that looks to be little more than frayed fabric, and a torn and tattered, too-thin and stretched tank top depicting a great horned owl staring, wide eyed.

She doesn’t turn her all the way, she stops when her shoulder is pointing off to the side of Frank, but her head doesn’t stop moving. It turns all the way around to face him. Her eyes are covered by a comically yellow bandana. Her golden hair, short, is well kept, as looks her face under the bandana.

“You will tell them the time is up,” her voice is throaty, deep in her chest something rattles. When her mouth opens, Frank can make out an almost-reptilian tongue flicking at her sharp teeth as she speaks. He remains frozen. He doesn’t respond. He reaches one arm out to scrabble for his skateboard (he’s used it as a bludgeoning weapon before, when needed) before he realizes he left it in Ray’s car last night like a fucking idiot.

“You will tell them. You will tell Athena’s boy. He’s run out of time. The window of opportunity has closed,” she hisses over her sharp teeth. And then she’s gone in a flash like yesterday, with the vaguest smell of low tide.

Frank stares groggily at the spot door, blown open, and totters over to it, still half asleep, shaking his head. 

“Too fucking early for creepy god messengers,” he mutters to himself, and then he goes to make coffee and text Ray.

* * *

The sky is the exact color of wet steel wool. The clouds are pregnant, looming over the world in a vaguely existential way. Frank feels tiny. Frank feels lost and confused. He’s worried about whatever’s going on with Patrick and his mother. He’s worried about the dog. He’s worried about getting his skateboard back, he’s just worried to be worried.

His stomach turns. He thinks about how if he were younger he’d be reaching for a bottle of beer rather than walking toward a bus stop. He thinks about how far he’s come and how it’s not enough. He’s grown out of his high school irresponsibility, but not the high school loneliness. He’s just put a new address on it. He’s just changed the ‘return to sender’.

Frank thinks, while he sits at the bus stop and lights a marlboro red, that he hasn’t changed. That no one does and no matter how much they lie to themselves, everyone who says they’ve changed is just pretending to be someone that they’re not.

Humanity is set in its ways, instincts are instincts and everyone will always be driven by the nasty forces in their guts.

Frank just wants his skateboard back. He buries his face in his hands and watches the slush through his fingers. He sucks nicotine through a cellulose filter. He slides his earbuds into his ears and he loses himself in headlights on the wet street.


End file.
